Thought One: The idea of a horde of invisible monsters itself may sound both terrifiyng and ridiculous at the same time. But, after seeing such a close call, it turns out that you really shouldn’t underestimate a threat. Never.
Thought Two: Ryn must have been pumping up Perception to some godly levels.

Hmm, looks very similar to the monster Viviana dreamed of immediately before the Vivias ship set sail.

Not quite. That was pretty much clean-cut giant werewolf with some sort of armor playing under the fur that made it resistant to Ilias’ sword. This (when visible) is sort of like a black sabertooth. With four eyes.

@ clickbait:
As far as I understood it from the little insight in the exams we got in book one, everyone on the academy got at least some magic training, but you could apparently choose to focus more on magic (like Lilith) or more on mundane combat training (like Sandril and Alyssa), so we don’t know how powerful Ryn is with his spells and if he even knows spells for attack. Furthermore, as has already been stated, a shield is probably a smarter move than a counterattack to avert the attack of an invisible enemy that you do not know and cannot locate exactly.

The “CAST” tab above at one time listed Ryn as “1/3 wizard”. I took that to mean he is capable of casting a handful of spells, but no way was he as powerful as a full wizard, and Lilith is far more powerful than your average wizard. Perhaps Ryn is only capable of casting one spell a day before running out of juice?

This is their first real fight against real bad guys. Now we get to see his (and Alissa’s) stuff. 🙂

@ Blablablablitz:
Shield made it visible. Firing a death ray is an all or nothing proposition, and a bad gamble against an invisible foe if a wide shield is available to deal with the surprise attack.

I assume that is missquote – so I will defend my choice – it tends to act as serious deterent for any attacker… my choice at this distance would be prismatic spray but that is magic beyond Ryn I would say

The “CAST” tab above at one time listed Ryn as “1/3 wizard”. I took that to mean he is capable of casting a handful of spells, but no way was he as powerful as a full wizard, and Lilith is far more powerful than your average wizard. Perhaps Ryn is only capable of casting one spell a day before running out of juice?

This is their first real fight against real bad guys. Now we get to see his (and Alissa’s) stuff.

The German version of the “Cast” tab still lists him as 2/3 Fighter + 1/3 Mage by the way.

Since Gaia had been a Neverwinter Nights Campaign several ages ago …

In games like Neverwinter Nights (I guess all D&D based games) you could level your char not only in his base class you could (at least under certain circumstances) decide to give your -say – fighter at least a few level-ups as – say – mage.

The result would be somehow like you expected: a char who is not quite as powerful in his main role but has at least some powers in his secondary.

Hmm. A level 20 char with 2/1 fighter/mage would be something like a level 14 fighter / level 6 mage. That’s definitely stronger then “one spell a day” or “a few tricks” … but not that much.

(And playing class combos like that efficiently was anything but easy. Those 6 missing levels really hurt)

I notice the horse didn’t react to the oncoming creature. So much for trusting resting horses (as mentioned in the replies for last comic) to show that things are okay. And yes, we all underestimated Rin, frequently and often.

@ clickbait:
A 2/3 fighter, 1/3 mage in Neverwinter Nights is not just hard to play, it’s pretty much gimping yourself. With a lot of optimization, you can make the character good (don’t know if that applies to an AI controlled fighter/mage), but a straight fighter or mage would with equal optimization be much better still. The same actually goes for archers period. This makes me a bit curious how Ryn and Alissa were supposed to not suck in the campaign. Heck, I’ve even made a few jokes about how the party should replace those two.

Granted, it was supposed to be a Neverwinter Nights 2 campaign, so there could be prestige classes that allows fighter/mages and archers to not suck. I’m not very knowledgeable about the second NWN.

A note about the German cast page: Viviana is categorized as a supporting character.

Reading all the comments prompted me to have a look at the cast page, both the germa and the english one.
And I noticed that both have completely different content.

Viviana for example is listed as a main character on the english page, while listed as only a supporting character on the german one.
Additionally, the description of the german page simply states that she is a female member of the shadowdancers who failed to steal the Avaril from the Baltor’s House. The English one is completely different.
I’m not the first to comment on this though, see @ Crystalgate’s comment.

I have to go check out Neverwinter nights now. Have not heard of it before.

@ TSK: There are quite a few thing making a difference. Pure size for example. And numer of eyes. . Aaaand the one before “only” used the ability of… high-level compression. And decompression. On himself. And this one “only” uses invisibility. So no, we won’t say that they are the same thing, but probably both monsters share the source. I hope i haven’t made that many mistakes while writing this.

@ Blablablablitz:
Shield made it visible. Firing a death ray is an all or nothing proposition, and a bad gamble against an invisible foe if a wide shield is available to deal with the surprise attack.

I assume that is missquote – so I will defend my choice – it tends to act as serious deterent for any attacker… my choice at this distance would be prismatic spray but that is magic beyond Ryn I would say

Misquote it was. Indeed, if he doesn’t follow that up with [lethal targetted spell of choice]. he’s doing it wrong. But reliably negating the enemy surprise attack is perfectly respectable.

@clickbait Not “Death Ray”, just “death ray”, the generic – any lethal but tight beam requiring precise aim, particularly an electromagnetic or particle weapon, perhaps of the form with which robotic hitmen comprised of tin are equipped. I wasn’t aware Gaia had a necromancy school, just bluestream and redstream (do we have a spell list someplace??). But any attack that travels in a narrow line, be it arrow, bullet, magic beam of get-rekt, or spitball, will suffer from the requirement of “aim.”